Page 83 - Australian Motorcycle News (January 2020)

Circus a much faster and more competitive
3 4
8 Giulio Cesare Carcano, the legendary designer of
King joining Brambilla in a three-man team.
McIntyre finished fifth in the World series, King
eighth and Brambilla 10th, while the light, good-
handling twin beat the MV Agusta four to win
the Italian 500cc title in Brambilla’s hands, a feat
which Remo Venturi repeated in 1964. But that
coincided with the end of Bianchi’s battle against
the odds financially, and in September ’64, it filed
for bankruptcy.
That same month Lino Tonti was recruited
by Gilera to design two new models with which
company owner Giuseppe Gilera intended to
mount a marketplace comeback for Italy’s oldest
motorcycle marque. Both men now understood
that, with the advent of the affordable small
car, a motorcycle would henceforth be a leisure
instrument rather than an everyday mode of
transport. Tonti therefore modernised Gilera’s
most popular current model to create the 124 5V
sports single, which was an immediate success
when introduced in 1966, especially in Regolarità
Casa guise as one of the first street enduros.
He also designed the equally acclaimed all-
new B500 parallel-twin, but this never reached
production due to a lack of capital to underwrite
manufacturing costs, prompting Tonti to leave
Gilera ahead of the inevitable 1969 Piaggio
takeover. While awaiting another job, he revived
his old Linto brand in conjunction with former
racer turned car dealer Umberto Premoli, to create
a 500cc twin-cylinder GP racer aimed at delivering
to the privateer members of the Continental
alternative to their elderly British singles.
The Linto 500 was unveiled in November 1967,
and to speed up the project and cut down on
costs via the use of already available components,
Tonti’s design utilised several Aermacchi parts
in its construction – sensible, really, given that
the Harley-owned factory was literally a stone’s
throw from Premoli’s Varese car workshop where
the project was conceived. And that by then the
fleet little pushrod singles had earned a name for
themselves as reliable and competitive privateer
mounts in the 250/350cc classes.
But by then Tonti was working for Moto Guzzi,
which in 1967 had finally gone bust and been
taken over by SEIMM, which decided to fire
all Guzzi’s landmark postwar products. In 1968
Tonti was hired to replace him, and managed
to convince the beancounters to sanction the
development of a sportier version of the transverse
V-twin 700cc V7 model which Carcano had
developed from the basis of an engine he’d built in
1960 to power a small three-wheeled truck.
Assisted by Carcano’s disciple Umberto
Todero, Tonti transformed the placid V7 into a
genuine high-performance motorcycle, although
development work was interrupted by labour
unrest which saw the Mandello del Lario factory
picketed. Refusing to accept the delay, Tonti
was helped by Todero and some experimental
department mechanics to load a set of engine
castings and a stack of chrome-moly steel tubes
late at night into a van to whisk them away to
his home basement workshop. Weeks later the
THE LINTO 500
The bloke’s 500cc grand prix racer was as fast as it was frustrating…
THE LINTO COMPRISED a tubular steel space frame with a 360° OHV parallel-twin
engine consisting of two horizontal 250cc Aermacchi cylinders and heads on a
specially-designed crankcase. Essentially, everything outside the crankcase mouth,
including conrods, was Aermacchi; the rest made by specially-commissioned outside
suppliers. A dozen race bikes were sold, and
a prototype streetbike completed, but never
developed.
Lintos soon gained a reputation as
troublesome devices that were frustratingly
fast when they chose to perform as intended.
Ignition problems were a constant plague,
until in 1970 Premoli installed Dansi
electronic ignition, which completely solved
the difficulty. Customers all suffered brief
but frustrating glimpses of the promised
land with the occasional good result,
and Swiss-Hungarian Gyula Marsovski
managed to make his Linto reliable enough
to finish second in the 1969 500cc World
championship behind Giacomo Agostini’s
MV – perhaps because he was accustomed
to the rigorous maintenance requirements
of a two-stroke Yamaha.
But though works rider Alberto Pagani
scored the Linto’s only GP victory in Ago’s
absence at the 1969 Italian round at Imola,
every Linto rider suffered copious problems
which were nevertheless gradually ironed out.
On a factory bike incorporating all these improvements Pagani enjoyed a successful
1971 season, finishing fifth in the 500cc World championship. But by then the four-
stroke era of GP racing was drawing to a close, and the HIR Kawasaki represented an
even faster, if only slightly less fickle, two-stroke privateer option.
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